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(Read this series from its beginning here.)
In Part 2 we are continuing our topic this week of this week of debt cancellation in the gospels and our reading from the gospel of Luke.
There’s a slightly different lesson in the manna story in the Exodus tradition. For those who tried to store or hoard more than they needed instead of sharing with others who had gathered less, the manna “bred worms and became foul” by the next day. In this example you simply could not amass a “wealth” of manna. It was impossible.
This, along with the debt forgiveness of the Torah, is an economic Jewish tradition Jesus was standing in firmly within his own culture. For the oppressed community of the gospels for whom Jesus’ teachings held deepest meaning, it was clear that one could not serve both wealth and people because one would have to choose between individual opulence and community thriving. (Certain Indigenous traditions also speak of this contrast in their ancient wisdom. See Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation by George E. Tinker.)
Someone somewhere has to suffer loss for wealth to be created, but Jesus taught that that someone somewhere was an object of Divine Universal love for whom the sun was also shining and the rain falling (Matthew 5:45).
As the saying goes “Each day there’s enough for every person’s needs, but not every person’s greeds.” Wealth means having more of what one needs while others do not. In Jesus’ worldview, however, it’s not about everyone having the same quantity, but everyone having the same quality. Some people don’t need as much to thrive. Others need more. In a just world vision with God as the Great, Just Householder, no one has too much while others don’t have enough.
Dishonest Wealth
Our story this week is a lesson on how to use “dishonest wealth” to benefit people.
This strange story only appears in Luke’s version of the gospels and has troubled Christians from the very beginning. Based on this trouble, many of the most progressive historical Jesus scholars attribute this story to the historical, Jewish Jesus.
To be clear, I don’t interpret this story as determining the moral value of dishonest business dealing, embezzlement, or fuzzy accounting. What it does commend holds lessons for us still today.
(Read Part 3)
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